All things considered, it was as well that John had the consolation offered him by the Giant Twin. That bulky machine became as good as a brother to him, sharing his troubles and giving him, in the very few mechanical defects it developed, other things to think about than the drunkenness of his father and the disorder of his home.
It is only doing Mr. Marble bare justice to admit that he was happily unconscious of the turmoil in his son’s life. He had other things to think about, too, matters of life and death. The old obsessions were gripping him hard, despite all the distractions offered him in the fact of his having a son at the College, and a daughter at the most expensive school in Berkshire, and a new interest in his life centring in a house in the next road whose gate was adorned with a brass plate bearing the legend “Madame Collins, Modes and Robes.” The evenings were many when the lure of that house was not sufficient to drag him away from his steady watching over the backyard from his coign of vantage in the drawing-room.
Marble had more to lose now: security of income, a house full of Empire furniture, a rapidly-expanding and catholic library of books on criminal matters, as much whisky as he was able to drink, a woman who took a more than friendly interest in him. And the irony of it lay in the fact that the more he had to lose the more anxious he was not to lose it, and the more difficult it became in consequence to enjoy all these priceless possessions. Those summer months fled past him like a maelstrom; he was hardly conscious of what was happening around him. The sweets of life were bitter to his palate, in that they were poisoned by the girding worry that was ever present and ever increasing.
The summer term flashed by. It hardly seemed a week since he had seen Winnie off from Paddington before his wife began to make arrangements for her return. Then she spoke to Mr. Marble about holidays.
“Holidays,” said Mr. Marble, vaguely.
“Yes, dear. We’re going away this summer, aren’t we?”
“I don’t know,” said Mr. Marble. “Are we?”
“We didn’t go away at all last summer,” said Mrs. Marble, “and the one before that we only had those few days at Worthing. We can afford it, can’t we?”
“M’yes. I suppose so. But I don’t know what arrangements the office are making.”
“Oh, dear,” said Mrs. Marble. She had looked forward to a holiday this year, if only to get away from having to look after that house and to give her a chance of wearing all the wonderful clothes she had bought.
“I suppose you had better go anyway,” said Mr. Marble, who was absolutely determined that he, for one, was not going to leave that house unguarded. “I’ll look up some nice hotel for you and the kids to go to. I might come down for a bit if I can get away from the office.”
Annie Marble drew her breath in sharply. A hotel! No washing-up, no bother about food, servants to do her bidding; it seemed like a prospect of heaven. There was just a slight momentary fear in her bosom as she thought of possible motives in Mr. Marble’s handsome offer, but her suspicions were too unformed for her to be very worried, and further, there were two possible motives for Mr. Marble wishing to be left in the house, and Mrs. Marble was a little too muddleheaded to disentangle them. Instead, she accepted gratefully.
“But are you sure you’ll be all right, dear?” she said, perforce.
“Of course I will.” And that settled the matter.
Soon after Winnie came back from school, strangely mature, and rapidly fulfilling her early promise of beauty. She seemed a different girl, somehow. There was an alteration in her speech. Not that she had ever talked broad cockney—her other school friends had always considered her “refined,” but the slight trace of a twang when she used the higher registers had now disappeared, in fact, she did not employ those higher registers at all now. She talked more throatily—“pound-notey” was the terse descriptive phrase popular in that district—and she was much more self-possessed and placid than she had been when she went away. Mr. Marble was pleased, as pleased as he could be at that period—he was going through rather a bad time just then—and Mrs. Marble, as was inevitable, was heartily sorry. Winnie had grown away from her.
But neither of her parents, much as they fussed about her when she arrived, noticed her tiny lift of the eyebrows as she entered their wonderful dining-room, with its wonderful mosaic table. Winnie had now had experience of what good rooms look like, and to her, the half-forgotten gaudiness of the gilt furniture in terrible contrast to the faded wallpaper was indescribably vulgar.
Later she hinted as much to her mother, but her comments were not received very gratefully. Mrs. Marble at once began to fidget with her sewing—a sure sign that she was embarrassed.
“Your father has one or two odd fancies, dear,” she said, fumbling, blushing and stammering. “I shouldn’t mention it to him if I were you. He doesn’t like the idea of having a lot of people about the house, as we should have to have if we had any decorations done. Besides,”—she bridled a little, for she was as proud as was her husband of the gilt furniture.—“I’m sure this room looks very well indeed. I’m sure nobody in this road has anything half as good in their house. I don’t expect there are many rooms like this in London, even. And, of course, every room in the house is done in the same way. Madame Collins says it’s as good as the Louvre, and she ought to know, seeing she’s been there.”
And that at once placed the matter
